


Adrift

by ReaperWriter



Category: Scandal (TV)
Genre: Addiction, F/M, Friendship, Origin Story, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-09
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-05 01:33:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ReaperWriter/pseuds/ReaperWriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Olivia asks Huck for a great sacrifice, the price is higher than expected.  Spoilers for everything through Crash and Burn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adrift

**Author's Note:**

> Not my sandbox, just borrowing it. Thank you to Guillermo Diaz, whose performance inspired this.

He lays there, on the slick plastic, covering the weird industrial carpet people were putting in their houses these days, manic, telling this guy he used to be comrades in arms with all about the scalpel and how he’ll use it. How it will make his blood sing to do it. Because there is no addict like an off the wagon addict, and for Olivia, he will leap from the wagon and off the cliff. Because the others are gladiators in suits, but not him. He is much, much scarier. He’s the thing that goes bump in the night.

San Luis Obispo, California, 2001

There once was a young man named Javier Rodriguez. He was a brilliant young man, a full scholarship student, about to graduate with dual degrees in Computer Science and Political Science from CalPoly. His thoughts were on his graduation as he walked to his small apartment off campus, carrying the bag from the book store with his cap and gown in it. Already, he was being scouted by a number of major companies, around the country and in some cases the world and the possibilities were exciting. So exciting that he almost didn’t notice that his front door was unlocked. Almost.

Pausing, Javier shifted the bag up his arm to give himself both hands free and carefully pushed the door open. His aluminum softball bat was leaning up against the wall next to the door and he picked it up quietly with one hand. Ghosting over the linoleum, he hefted it noiselessly.

“If I wanted you dead,” a voice from the living room said, “you would never have picked it up.” Javier paused, and walked slowly into the living room. The man sitting on his ratty, student couch was non-descript. Average. Average height, average weight, average complexion. Hair not really brown or blond or red. The kind of a guy who would blend so far into a crowd, he would be invisible. Except for the gun, laid across his knees.

“Who are you?” He set the bat down, tossed the bag with the robe into a chair at his little kitchen table.

“I’m the man who’s about to offer you the coolest job in the world.” The man calmly set the gun on the coffee table, next to the cold cup of coffee he’d left there in the morning, and stood. “You can call me Micah.”

 

Langley, Virginia, 2002

He had said yes. And it was the coolest job in the world. CalPoly was no slouch in the technology department, but the agency had all the best toys. But some of the training…he had assumed that being knowledgeable of torture techniques was just part of the job, something you knew, but didn’t use. And he had proved surprisingly adept at it, with the corpses of pigs they trained on. Never cutting too deep, never bleeding too much. Maximum pain, prolonged.  
And then 4 planes and thousands of people later, and the pigs weren’t dead anymore, and suddenly, it seemed like a necessary evil. And he was good at it. So very good. An artist, his trainer said. Picasso with 10 penny nails and a blow torch. It was painful, at first, and horrifying, but slowly, he learned to find the joy in it.  
Munich, 2006

Her name was Eleanor, but she went by Lenny. One of the guys, though anyone with eyes could see that was about as far from the truth as humanly possible. She was MI-6, in this, one of those rare times of interagency cooperation, thanks to four homegrown British terrorist who set bombs off on the Metro. Shortly after, MI-6 and the Agency joined forces to track down weapons being moved out of Eastern Europe, including, it was initially suspected, C-4 for the London attacks. Even when it came out the bombs had been chemically created, the project was already entrenched and turning up good intel, and was left alone.

Lenny was an artist, but in a completely different way. She was Frida Kahlo to his Diego Rivera, Zelda to his F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joann Woodward to his Paul Newman. Where he dealt in physical pain, in mortification of the flesh, she was a flayer of minds. He ravaged, and she seemed to sooth, spinning half-truths and subtle falsehoods like a web, drawing the subject in, and then extracting whatever secrets they had to hide. Their symmetry was epic in its horror, exquisite and appalling.  
And it felt good. It was like a drug, to take someone who was iron and steel, titanium in their hatred of you and everything you represent, and to break them down like so much shattered porcelain until they were ready to tell you their deepest, darkest secrets. You were the hero of the Hollywood action movie, saving the fate of the world. It was the power, and the glory, amen. The high lasted for days, left you breathless and spinning. 

Raised in a family of diplomats, Lenny could sound American or Canadian, British or Russian. She spoke seven languages, and for fun, liked to talk dirty in all of them when he was on the other end of her mike. Her black hair streamed down her back, and her eyes glowed green when she was having fun. And Christ, they had so much damn fun.

The first time they had fucked, it was at the end of an op in Berlin. After they had showered to rinse off the blood of the man they had spent twenty-seven hours interrogating, they had gone out to a club. Hours and liters later, they had stumbled back to the cheap apartment they were using as a base of operation, sweaty and drunk, and high on adrenaline. She had locked the door and turned to him, and had spotted the tiny fleck of brown on his neck, saved from the water by his stubble. She had grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her, his weight pushing her into the wall, as she licked the spot, and then nipped his jaw with her teeth.  
In the morning, amid the mess of ripped clothes and bruises, scratches and bite marks, they said nothing, breaking down equipment and packing gear, preparing to move on to Kiev to follow the intel. Professionals. Partners.

The second time they had slept together, a subject had gotten loose and gone for her, slashing her side with one of his knives. It was a long wound, but not deep, burning bright. She had to physically pull him off the man to keep him from pummeling him to death with his bare hands. It had been hours before the guy was conscious enough to complete the interrogation. That night, she had let him take off her top, using a warm cloth to sponge off the seeping blood and loosen the butterfly bandages she had used as a stop-gap. And she had held perfectly still as he heated the needle over a flame and used it to stitch the line up in perfect, tiny stitches. Her little breaths of pain found something in him he thought was long dead, and he would have given anything to reverse their roles. And when it was done, he had leaned in and kissed her mouth, softly, tasting the cognac she had drunk to dull the pain, feeling her moan against his lips.  
It had been slow and careful, human and gentle, and he had been surprised when she had cried after, tucked into the side of him, held close to his chest. He had been more surprised to feel his own salt tears, sliding down his face. Stroking her hair, they cried themselves to sleep. In hind sight, it was probably the beginning of the end.

The third time they made love, they were between jobs. Normally, they would have gone home, seen family. Instead, they had gone to Hallstatt. In a small cottage, overlooking the lake, they had spent days. Cooking. Reading. Going for walks and boating. He would wake her with his lips on her breast, sucking gently, and she would fall asleep laying across him, still holding him inside of her. Like normal people. Like people who didn’t destroy other people for a living. Engaging in a happy little fantasy that they weren’t dark, and twisted, sacrifices in the pursuit of a better world.

 

Kosovo, 2008

Freedom, someone once said, was another word for having nothing left to lose. Intelligence worked the other way around. They found you young and molded you before you gained things worth loosing. When they could make you into a foot soldier, a true believer, a convert of the deepest conviction. When they could convince you that carving someone’s eye out to get information was a perfectly logical thing to do.

When you find something worth loosing, you’re done. To their line of thinking, it’s like terminal cancer, a permanent weakness. You go from being an asset to being a liability, a simple shift in the ledger of world politics.

It had started when their supervisors ordered them to break the former militant at any cost. Not satisfied with their results, they had drug in the man’s twelve year old daughter and told Javier to work on her. Before he could be forced to refuse, the man had rolled, told them whatever they needed. So much, he had been turned, and the mission shifted to getting him and his family out.

It had gone south as they had crossed the street to the warehouse with his wife and the girl to where their other children were waiting. A shot rang out and the wife was on the ground. He had picked up the girl and run as Lenny laid down fire and worked to drag the man away from the corpse. He heard the grunt as they made it through the door.

The girl was crying, her father hysterical as he shoved them both behind the cover of crates with the little boy and baby girl. He turned to see Len, checking their position, out the windows, head low. Saw the mangled flesh at her ankle where the shards of bullet were imbedded.

“Can you run?” he asked, quietly. He always got quiet when things were bad.

“No.” She checked her clip, then her back up pistol. “How many magazines do you have?”

“Six. Lenny.”

“Give me two.” Her voice was flat.

“Lenny,” he said again. “I won’t.”

“Complete the mission, Javier.” She ripped a strip from her shirt, and bent down to bind her ankle. He took it from her and did it, cringing as she hissed in pain. 

“No. Not without you.”

“You stay, we all die. “ She looked at him, and switched to Spanish. “Javi, I need you to go. Now. Give me the clips and go. Otherwise, this is for nothing.”

He breathed for a minute, tried to think, but no alternative presented itself. The rendezvous site for the extraction was three blocks. If he cleared it, he could turn them over, and turn around. “Len.” He put a hand to her face, looked into her eyes. Taking off his St. Christopher medal, he put it around her neck and tucked it into her shirt. “I will come for you, Len.”

“No.” She breathed. “Get them out. Follow protocol. Javi, please. Go.”

He kissed her, hard, everything he couldn’t say in that kiss. Then he handed her the magazines, watching her stash them in her belt. He gathered the living, and stood at the door. With a crack of his boot, it flew open and they ran, the older girl on his back, the baby in his arms, the boy with his father, as Lenny opened up and laid cover fire. They ran. And ran. Two minutes, four, six, ten. 

At the rendezvous, his supervisor listened to his status update as he grabbed three fresh mags. Lenny’s stood nearby. “I’m going back, sir.”

“No, you aren’t Rodriquez. You are too valuable for a fool’s suicide mission.”

“I am going back.”

“She’ll be dead,” the MI-6 man said. “Protocol says fire to the last shot, never be taken. Eleanor’s a professional.”

“I am going back. Sirs.” He turned to walk to the door.

“We’ll burn you both, if you survive.” 

“All respect. Fuck you.”

He ran. Faster now, without all the extra weight. Past the mother’s corpse in the street, gun out, into the warehouse. He could hear labored breathing, saw the first dead man. A second lay near a place where the crates formed a bottle neck. A man looked around the edge, intent on what was in front of him. He never heard the boots of the man who snapped his neck. 

“Len.” He said it softly. No fire came at him. Louder. “Len.”

“Javi.” The weakness in her voice terrified him. He came through the bottle neck and found her, crouched behind a smaller crate. Her back up pistol lay in her hand, made useless by the gunshot to her shoulder, her service weapon on the ground, jammed. Blood soaked the white cotton of her blouse as he ripped off his over shirt and pressed it into her shoulder. “You shouldn’t have come. They’ll end you.”

“Shh.” He used the sleeves to tie the balled up shirt in place, grabbed her weapons, and then lifted her. Outside, he found a van on a side street and took it, driving like a bat out of hell, up to the gate of the NATO joint command center. Two soldier drew on him, but he got out with his hands up. “I’ve got an injured British woman. We were attacked, I need help.”

The guards took his weapons, while a crew of medics came running. They took Lenny and put her on a stretcher. He clasped her hand for a moment, and she was gone. He never saw Eleanor again.

 

Langley, 2008

He had been in a room in the NATO compound, when the soldier hit him in the back of the head with a rifle stock. He woke up with a hood on, on a plane. Minutes turned to hours, hours turned to days. Then they came for him, and the questions began. Why had he disobeyed an order? Who turned him? Who was he working for?

He told the truth, but it didn’t matter. They would leave, and someone else would come, and it would start again. He kept asking about Lenny, to everyone who came in the room. After what could have been one week or seven, in this dark, airless hole, Micah walked in.

“You disappoint me, Javier.” The man walked around the chair he was strapped to, flecked with his own blood, feces, and dried urine. “I had great expectations for you. You were my brightest find.”

“Where’s Lenny?” he asked. 

“Gone.” Micah stopped. “There are consequences to our actions, Javier. Great consequences. And collateral damage.”

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Eleanor Callan is dead.”

It was an unearthly noise, like a wounded, feral animal. Micah shook his head and walked out of the room. Not long after, they began giving him the drugs. Crack and heroin, mostly. Little food, no light. It didn’t take long before Javier Rodriquez was dead too.

 

Washington, DC, 2010

The nameless man sat against the wall of the subway station at the Smithsonian, mute. A ratty rucksack sat next to him, an overturned ball cap at his feet with a tattered cardboard sign that read “Homeless, please help.” A few dollar bills and some loose change lined the inside.

From across the platform, the man and the woman regarded him. He clocked them, but figured they were probably from another senator’s office, there judging the homeless problem in DC for some report. He closed his eyes, and imagined black hair, reflecting in beautiful blue water.

He opened them when he sensed someone near and was surprised to find the woman squatting in front of him. He tried to scrabble back against the wall, and her male companion took a step closer.

“It’s all right,” she said, her voice warm and confident. “I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Olivia, and I am looking for someone.” She took a picture out of her inner jacket pocket and handed it to him.

Shock, like electricity ran through him and he moaned. A man he used to be stared back at him, smiling, sitting in a little beer garden, by the water, a pint in his hand. An illicit souvenir of broken rules and broken souls.

Quick as a flash, he grabbed the hat and the sign and tried to shove them into the bag. The woman smiled sadly. “Please, sir, it’s okay. My client asked me to find you. She said to show you this.” A glint of silver, and the St. Christopher was there. 

He started to cry and rock, until she reached out and touched his hand. Its’ been a lifetime since another person touched him in kindness and he stilled. 

“This is my friend Steven.” The man nodded to him, but didn’t approach. “My client very much wants to see you. Will you let us help you?”

He looked at her for a long moment. From long disuse, his voice had sounded like a croak. “Call me Huck.”

They had taken him to a suburban neighborhood, to a house edging on the country in Maryland. Olivia pointed him into the bathroom, where he took his first shower in he couldn’t remember how long. After, a delivery guy had brought Chinese. When he had eaten, and changed into the clean clothes Steven had gone and gotten for him, he started to jones. It had been a while since he scored. Just then, a tall red head had come into the house and handed a small orange vial to Olivia. She brought it over to wear he sat, twitching the jerks of the addicted.

“This is Methadone,” she said. “I think heroin has been your drug of choice. We can use this to help you, get you clean.”

He starred at his feet for a long time, then nodded. Taking the pill and water, he swallowed it. Then, finding his voice, he said “I need time. I’m not…she’s dead, I’m dead, not ready. Not ready.”

Olivia had nodded and shooed the others out, then took a seat by the bed he had curled up on. She picked up a book and started reading, and before long, he slept.

When he awoke, Olivia was gone and a different woman was in her place. This one had soft black hair, shorter than in his day dreams, and startling green eyes. 

Deep sadness and deep joy warred in them as she watched him watching her. She reached for him and he cringed and scooted away from her. She saw his eyes on her arm and she realized her blouse had slipped up, exposing the tiny cuts left there by someone like who they used to be.

“Javi…”

“No.” He croaked it, shutting his eyes and shaking his head. “Javi’s dead, died in Kosovo.” He can’t breathe, can’t think.

She looked at him, and he couldn’t stand it. “Okay, then. What can I call you?”

“Huck.” 

“Okay, Huck. These days, I’m Sadie. Sadie Kingston.” She picked up the book, and started reading to him again.

Days blended as he ate, slept, took his methadone, and listened to one of them read. The first time a nightmare had taken him, it was the middle of the night, and his anguished screams had woken her from somewhere else in the house, he supposed. Suddenly, she was there, in soft cotton pajamas, climbing onto the bed and holding him, tightly, and rocking him like a child in the dark. Her hair smelled like cardamom and jasmine, and suddenly, he was back in that little Austrian cottage, burying his face in the waves of it as he makes slow, deep love to her. He cried then, turning and burying himself into the crook of her shoulder, and she stroked his hair and kissed his neck near his ear, whispering nonsense words and comfort in languages he had forgotten she knew.

Olivia told him later that she had found the team through Steven, who had been a friend of a friend of her brother at school. That she had come to Olivia, and told her who she was, what she was. That in the days and weeks after Kosovo, she had been kept chained to a hospital bed first, and then a wall, questioned over and over by someone younger than they were, someone who was still a true believer. That she had asked for her partner over and over, only to be told he was dead. But she had known Javi, better than anyone, and she knew he was a tough man to kill. She wanted to find him, whatever the cost.

And then one day, just like that, the chains came off. She was handed American identity papers for a Sadie Kingston, and a very, very generous bank account, and told to enjoy her retirement. Also, that her family had been sent her ashes after the tragic fire in the factory the NGO she worked for was investigating, and that it would be better for all involved if she never returned to Great Britain, because God might save the Queen, but he wouldn’t save her.

It’s a blessing in disguise, and she takes it, and starts looking. But while she has been retired, rather than burned, it feels the same. She has none of the toys, none of the intel, and her skills feel dirty and wrong now. Now that she’s been on the receiving end. Now that she thinks he has too. Because if this was done to them for Javi saving her life, had any order they had followed been good? Or had they been living their own personal My Lai? It shook her and left her gasping. Her ankle was shot, her nerves were worse, and she couldn’t find him on her own, and was afraid she wouldn’t at all. Until she found Steven, and Steven had told her the Gospel of Olivia Pope, and she felt hope for the first time in a long time.

She stayed. Until he was clean and sober, functional. But not whole. Never whole, neither of them. And he was more broken, for what had been done to him. He couldn’t see that she was bad off in her own way, felt like she couldn’t be saddled with him, not like this. He wasn’t the man a dead woman once knew, couldn’t be him again, not anymore. He couldn’t see that the woman in her place was something other, different. So he pulled away, turned cold, stopped speaking to her.

The woman who was now Sadie Kingston wasn’t stupid. Never had been stupid. She could read the writing on the wall. So she had gone to Olivia one last time, and paid her bill, overpaid and asked her to help Huck onto his feet, and gone on to tell her of his greater gift. The dead man had been good at human pain, but the one who remained was probably even better at taking apart the tech and all its intricacies. She had left her with her phone number, in case. And a letter to him, that Olivia gave him that night after she talked over her job offer with him.

He had opened it after Olivia left, after he had joined her band of merry, manic musketeers. The paper was non-descript, but the words nearly stopped his heart. “J,” it said. “I will come for you. Always. L.”

 

Washington, DC Present

Olivia Pope brooked loyalty. Any and all of them would follow her into Hell if she asked, and sometimes she had. Huck was no exception, and she knew, beyond a doubt, he would kill to protect her, to protect all of them. She had always planned to never make him have to. Until Amanda Tanner. 

The case had undone her, shifted her off her axis. She was groping for answers, taking risks, asking the cruel of her people. She had sworn to herself to never sacrifice them needlessly. She had doubted her promise in the second after the words left her mouth, when she saw Huck commit before she could take the request back. He would throw away it all for her, lay himself down for her, to make things right. It had seemed like a necessary cost then.

Now, standing in the viewing room of the morgue, staring through the glass as Hank Tanner identified the blue, pathetic corpse of his daughter, she tried to count the cost. Quinn was on the verge of losing her composure, Harrison and Steven grimly stood back, every emotional disconnect landing at the same time, shutting down and gearing off until she activated them again. Toy soldiers.

But Huck. She could feel it, roiling off of him. Feral energy, animal fury, power, intoxication, guilt. Huck was vibrating with it, and containment would hold it only so long. She reached a hand, like she had in the subway, and this time, he shied away, like a spooked horse about to throw itself into the barbed wire rather than be touched. And they were going to fucking rule it a suicide. 

“Its fine,” he said, and she knew it wasn’t, could feel it in her bones. He was out the door ahead of her and had melted into the night like a ghost. She needed to fix this, fix all of it, and she knew when to call in support. She pulled out her phone and dialed a number she had never used.

“Hello?” The voice was smooth on the other , warm, and to anyone’s ears, American. She could hear what sounded like crickets in the back ground.

“Sadie, it’s Olivia Pope.” She paused when she heard the sharp intake of breath. “Sadie, I…”

“I’m coming.” And the line went dead.

She found him in a bad part of town, huddled in a door way, used needle beside him on the stoop. His eyes were unfocused in the middle distance. “Oh, Huck,” Sadie breathed. “What did you take?” She took the needle carefully and tossed it in a dumpster, then checked his pulse. Alive and breathing, but not really there.

She picked him up, hard to do with her weak shoulder and gimp ankle, and man handled him into her car. The drive out of DC and into Virginia, along the high way and then off onto country roads, took around an hour. Huck never moved, his head leaned against the door post, tilted to look out, but not really seeing it. She pulled onto the gravel drive that eventually led to the small farm. Miles from anything, including near neighbors.

She took his hands and pulled him up and towards the house, letting them in with her key. Huck was strangely compliant as she undressed him, and turning the shower to hot, stepped in with him in her clothes, taking a soft cloth and gently cleaning the flecks of blood his shirt had hidden, the sweat from the drugs in his system.

After, she had redressed him in some random old sweats she kept in the house, and putting on dry clothes, made a quick curry stir fry, in the hope that the spice of the food might jolt him out of the haze. Finally, she took him to her guest room and tucked him into her guest bed. As she turned to leave, his hand shot out and grabbed her arm like a vice. Her green eyes met his golden ones, and she found naked fear and self-loathing, and need.

The woman who had been Lenny Callan toed off the sensible slides on her feet and crawled into the bed next to him. He immediately curled into her side, like he had once before, and sobbed like a child. She stroked his back and hummed softly until he slept. Only when she knew he was unconscious did her own tears fall.

Olivia was on her porch not long after dawn, when he was still sleeping. She took two coffee cups and stepped out with her, sitting down in a pair of chairs overlooking the field where her horse was grazing. She let the silence sit until Olivia quietly asked, “Is he okay?”

“Would you be?” The derision and anger in her voice surprised her. He wasn’t hers, not anymore, but she still felt like a trust she had granted this woman had been betrayed. Something in the other woman’s aspect sparked recognition. “Addiction is a devil of many guises. I suspect you know how hard won sobriety is, and how easily lost.”

“I wouldn’t have asked.” Olivia stopped and looked up. “I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t important.”

Sadie regarded her, then said quietly, “So is he.” 

This time the silence was longer as Olivia tried to think, tried to work through the train wreck her world had become in the last 72 hours. She noticed of glint of metal on Sadie’s left hand and paused. “That’s new,” she said, with a nod toward the ring.

Sadie glanced down confused, then laughed, a sound filled with disappointment and bitterness. “I decided when I moved here last year that being the widow Kingston was easier than turning down dates. The last town was convinced I was a lesbian.”

Olivia saw the sadness in her eyes. “Maybe someone new would be good for you,” she said, and realized how inane that sounded.

“Yeah, because guys really love a girl who spent her twenties mind-raping her country's enemies while her partner slowly bleeds them.” She pushed up the sleeves of the loose tunic she wore, revealing hairline white scars and small puckered burns. “It’s a turn on.”

“I’m sorry,” Olivia said, and meant it on so many levels. “Truly, I am.”

As fast as the anger rose, it’s gone. Placed back into a lock box deep inside. Olivia knows she should be scared of this woman, knows her skills set and Huck’s aren’t that different, but she mainly feels regret, for causing her pain.

“You never asked me, when I came to you, what he was to me,” Sadie said, suddenly. “Huck, I mean. You just agreed to help me find him.”

“I didn’t need to know.”

“Javier and Lenny were lovers.” Its eerie, how her voice shifts, like she’s talking about two strangers. “Which breaks about a million and one rules. It killed them in the end. So Sadie is a widow, twice.”

Olivia had left, shortly after, when Sadie agreed to let her know when Huck was ready to come home.

It takes days, this time, not weeks. He spends a lot of time with her horse, just being quiet, or helping her muck out the barn. She never demands he talk, and he’s grateful. More than grateful. Even with the limp, something in the way she moves sparks a memory, and he grabs hold of it, and uses it to replace his armor. To find the breathtaking moments in the bad old days and use them to rebuild that dam.

On the last night, he comes to her room. Thinking he had a nightmare, she scoots over for him and he lays next to her. But instead of curling up to sleep, he reaches out a tentative hand and strokes her hair, then traces her cheek down to her throat. She gasps, softly, and looks at him. “Len,” he whispers, and she gives an almost imperceptible moan, and then she’s trembling beside him. “Lenny.”  
Her lips find his, and he can feel the fear she has, that it’s not happening, that she’s hurting him, that she should stop it. And he’s terrified too; that he’ll break her, destroy her own fragile peace, and ruin the life she’s built. And he knows he can’t promise her anything, he’s in no condition, but he feels deeply alive, for the first time in a long time, and it’s the silk of her hair, the sound of her voice, the way her skin feels soft as rose petals, and beyond their fear, he can feel the need in her lips and he’s falling into her kiss.

They make love twice that night, before falling asleep. He has a bad moment when he takes her top off and sees what they did to her, and his rage is blinding for an instant, the instinct to maim and kill every fucking one of them, slow until they're begging for death, threatening to consume him, until she leans her forehead against his and takes his face in her hands and he centers, again. She is clinical with his scars, but he knows she’s cataloging them, in case the chance for revenge ever comes. Her furies always were ice to his fire.

They wake up like in Hallstatt and take comfort one last time, before he asks her to drive him into the city. They are silent, hands touching over the center console as they go. She asks nothing of him, and he makes no promises he can’t keep. She drops him at his apartment, and he pauses, and takes off the medallion Olivia had returned to him. He puts it on her, tucking it inside her shirt. “Wear it, for now?”

She nods and kisses his cheek, and then pulls away. When he walks into the office later, people stop what they are doing and look him over. Olivia notices the silence and sticks her head out. She’s hesitant, but he gives her the half smile he does on good days, and she returns it. “Welcome back.”

He nods, and quietly retreats to his tech cave, logging on and booting up, ready for whatever the day brings.


End file.
